News Ltd chief executive
Kim Williams
is expected to be appointed a director of Foxtel following News’s $2 billion takeover of Consolidated Media Holdings.

There was a “very high likelihood" of Mr Williams returning to the Foxtel board, although his appointment had not yet been formalised, said a source. Mr Williams was chief executive of Foxtel for 10 years until late 2011, when he replaced John Hartigan as the head of
News Corp
’s Australian operations.

The ConsMedia acquisition will allow News an additional two seats on the Foxtel board, giving it four directorships in total. Mr Williams is regarded as a strong character with forthright views and is unlikely to be a passive member of the Foxtel board.

Foxtel chief executive
Richard Freudenstein
who sits on the Foxtel board, quickly changed Mr Williams’s strategy by launching a range of lower-cost packages. Foxtel intends to sell more packages in the $70 to $90 a month range, compared with its monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) of $99 in June.

But his departure coincided with a softening of subscriber growth due to a consumer slowdown, free-to-air digital channels’ launch and the emergence of online video such as YouTube. Pay TV penetration has stuck at about 26 per cent of households.

Mr Freudenstein responded to the structural and cyclical challenges with the lower-price-point strategy. He previously ran News’s Australian digital operations and The Australian newspaper division, and is a former senior executive of BSkyB, of which News Corp owns 39 per cent.

Mr Williams, who has been a strong critic of Telstra, has floated the idea of News and Foxtel bundling newspaper and pay TV offerings.